Dare You to Love
by anatagasuki
Summary: Telling the truth is disturbing. Saying sorry is hard. But to dare love is painful.


Title: Dare You to Love  
Author: anatagasuki  
Genre: General/Angst  
Pairing: You don't need to mind that.  
Disclaimers: I don't own Slam Dunk. Not ever.  
Notes: Came out of nowhere. Not edited. In Rukawa's PoV

**_To tell the truth is disturbing. To say sorry is hard. To dare love is painful._**

I don't like dreaming.

It's such an irrational thing, contemplating on an impossible feat or an extraordinary vision.

It's a waste of time, of effort, and sometimes, even of money.

I don't like watching. Anything. It's like gazing at damn thing and it wouldn't get you anywhere. Some say it's entertaining. But I do have my basketball for that. Some say it's informative. I do have school for that. (By gods, don't mind the fact that I'm almost not present in school.) Some say it tells you what is happening to the world, but my ass, I don't care about the world.

I don't like socializing. Scratch that, I despise socializing. Why mingle with crazed people when you can sleep, you can rest, you can practice basketball, or you can just stare into space?

Why try in futility to blend with others? Why arduously attempt to make a connection?

I don't like picking girls, dating girls, fussing over delirious girls or even talking to them, only if necessity forces me to will I say a decent statement.

And why write? Why waste your time typing each letter to create a damned word? And why type each word to complete a paragraph? And why type each paragraph to create a story?

What bothers me most is the fact that I'm writing right now. Maybe it is a way, as most sentimentalists claim, to unleash a feeling or idea trapped within one's head. And heart.

Maybe. But do _I_ have one? Maybe.

Therefore I cannot say I despise this thing after all.

_**If love hurts, why do people take the risk? If love kills, why risk losing your life? If love is all that waiting... then why insist on saying, It's never too late?**_

There's been someone I know who's terribly fond of writing. A totally uninteresting person. Somehow, how impossibly silly it may seem, I still hung on to that someone's companionship. Maybe it's my gut telling me to do so, and as everyone knows I'm not exactly the logical type of person. I follow what my senses tell me to do, and apparently it told me to stay.

She says I'm the most irritating ice block she ever came across in her life. And I laugh. You might wonder, why I laugh. Because I'd say the same thing about her. She's the most irritating geek I'd ever come across with.

The irony of it, as much as I got used to her company, she doesn't seem to get used ever.

**_Sometimes we believe we know someone so much...that we don't need them then we'd realize they are slowly finding a way to our hearts._**

Unlike a hundred screaming girls she wouldn't come to practice, unlike a hundred bimbos she didn't make an effort to make herself presentable for me. Unlike a hundred punks she didn't bother to be frightened of my violent demeanor.

She said I was a modern day prince who was left out in winter. I say she's a modern day

Cinderella with a hard punch. And she punches me. Really incongruous.

She always asked me what I wanted to do when we're together. I shrug and keep my silence. She asked me about the reason why I loved basketball so much, how I give my everything for it, how I still adore it that even if I see the whole world crashing down I wouldn't mind as long as I have it. So much that I dare hope and dare defy all odds just to get my dream of being the best. So much that I was willing to wait until hell freezes over just to fulfill that one goal I treat as the purpose of my existence.

I say I don't love basketball as much as she believes, and that I'm not a fool to dream.

When she told me about her plan of going somewhere, I didn't really mind. But when she said _forever_, I was left dumbfounded.

And for all my indifference, I found out that I cared for her presence, and so I asked her simply to stay.

She just said; "I could do that, but I dare you to love me."

And suddenly our eyes met, with hope and desire flashing on hers, and mine painted with severe confusion and devastation. A flicker of warmth sparked somewhere inside me, the first I ever felt. It was new, and I wanted to embrace tyhe new sensation. But then I recalled, I swore not to let my emotions get the best of me a long time ago.

Then, in a spurn of the moment, I felt her warm, wet lips crash against mine. I stood there, unable to move a single limb. I wanted to reciprocate, but I don't know how. My whole body seemed to be splashed with fire, and for once I felt here, existing, loved, alive.

After a few seconds of me being motionless, she let loose and stepped away.

She stared at me again, this time with frozen, emotionless eyes. Then she turned her back and walked away. I didn't know how to react, what to say, and so I just filled the emptiness with my usual impeccable silence.

She left, with silent, light steps at night, like certain death. When all she left was a letter, I knew better than go look for her. _She _was the one who left. _She_ was the one who should come back.

Just then, I realized something.

Unlike a hundred admirers of mine she didn't say she loved me, or at least liked me.

_Just when I did._

In fact I stupidly hate her for it.

**_We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish._**

After eight years, just when I tho--fooled myself into believing I was as unemotional as I was before I met her, she unceremoniously returned. In the dark night. With evil glinting murderously in her eyes, with hands as cold as ice. She gripped not only me but my entire being, as she plunged a sharp, stainless knife deep into my chest. It was cold but she was much colder. I didn't bother to struggle, to fight. It's not that I don't want to live, just that I don't know how to live. So she could take my life anytime. And paradoxical as it is, I loved the way my body cascaded onto hers, and for once I could say I was happy, that at least I was dying in the arms of someone I _should _admit I learned to love.

But when I woke up in the white room, tubes around me, alone, I realized it just wasn't enough. And my former teammates came, my family. They looked at me sympathetically, with sad eyes. And they told me they were bringing me to someone who could help me. When my eyes flashed on the shining, platinum name patch marred with the word "psychiatrist" hanging on the white uniform of an old, bespectacled woman, I understood.

I don't like being interrogated. It's extremely troublesome.

I don't like having to tell them how this feels, to recall how hurtful it is, to admit how much of a failure I'd become. It's disturbing, menacing, and as cold as the pale hands that held the knife, hands that I soon discovered were mine.

I don't like to see the ocean of faces surrounding me, marred with compassion, of disgusting pity.

But I _do_ like doing something. That is, to love. To love and give it everything, up to the last breath, up to the time the world came crashing down. To dare hope, to dare defy all odds, to wait. To wait until hell freezes over.

She's worth it and more.

_**I was reborn when you first kissed me. I died when you left me. A part of me became alive when I hoped for you. But, now I still live, waiting for the day you return to me.**_


End file.
